Before I moved to Franklin County, I lived in a two-floor apartment in Cambridge with six other people. Today, Cambridge has 60,000 housing units. According to Jason Furman, a Harvard economics professor, officials in Cambridge are working on a housing plan to “allow multifamily residential housing to be built anywhere. Housing could be built up to at least six stories, minimum lot size requirements would be eliminated, and setback requirements would be reduced or eliminated.” The Cambridge Housing Plan promises “development that complements the existing urban fabric and developing neighborhoods.”

Cambridge has seven times more people to house than tiny Greenfield. We don’t have “urban fabric” here. That’s one of the reasons I came to Franklin County 50 years ago.

The Greenfield Planning Board on Dec. 5 is considering zoning changes that are distinctly “urban.” The board will take action on a proposal that allows “multifamily dwellings” (aka apartment buildings) to be developed for the first time “by right” outside of our Central Commercial district, in the Semi-Residential district, where multifamily buildings now require a special permit.

The board also is likely to raise the number of apartments allowed in one building from 24 to at least 50 — and has discussed removing the cap on apartments completely. All a developer has to do in a no-special-permit scenario is comply with a site plan review — which I refer to as a “lite plan review,”a de minimus process so trifling that not even the neighbors are notified when it’s happening.

The Planning Board is expected to add a requirement that abutters be notified of site plan reviews, but I have asked the board to consider ideas that would give citizens more than just an “observer” role in the permitting process:

■Require a traffic impact analysis that looks at issues like “level of service” at intersections.

■Require the board to take public hearing testimony at all site plan reviews.

■Allow the board chairperson to solicit questions from the public during a review, and ask the developer to respond in writing to such questions through the chair.

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■Require the chair to report at the review on all emails/letters submitted pro or con on a project.

Encourage the board to retain expert witnesses — paid for by the developer — on technical issues raised by an application, such as traffic or environmental impacts.

This open-ended development of apartment buildings is not an abstract discussion in Greenfield. A land transfer noted in the Recorder on Nov. 22 listed the sale for $215,000 of 76 School St., 1 acre of land that once was home to a Bart’s Ice Cream factory, to two investors from Bernardston and Northfield doing business as First Generation Investment Group LLC, created in 2020. This same investment group purchased, a week earlier, 324 Main St., which houses TD Bank and GCET, for $808,000.

The property at 76 School St. was purchased for only 61% of its 2024 assessed value of $355,100. The proposed development, listed on the website Brevitas, is described as “just two blocks west of Main Street, well located for a multifamily development. The current ice cream plant will be razed to make way for high density residential use … The owner has engaged an engineer to produce two concepts that would be allowed per the ‘By-Laws’ on a ‘By Right’ development basis. The ‘By-Right’ development plan indicates a minimum of 32 units. Seller will consider a joint venture opportunity.”

The southern half of School Street, including 76 School St., is zoned Central Commercial (CC), the only zone in the Greenfield Table of Uses where apartment buildings do not require a special permit. The property card for the site classifies the land as Factory. But under Greenfield zoning Section 200-7.2, multifamily dwellings require a special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals, and no structure may contain more than 24 dwelling units in a single building. The ZBA can waive the cap on multifamily dwellings, but only for “existing dwellings.”

In this case, the existing ice cream plant is being razed “to make way for high-density residential use.” So far, the ZBA has received no proposal to develop 76 School St.

The zoning spread of large apartment buildings by right is a cascading issue for Greenfield. When the Cambridge Housing Plan was published, one resident wrote a letter to The Boston Globe suggesting that property owners “will be forced to watch the value of their property plummet when six-story multifamily buildings crowd their yards.”

The Planning Board meets tomorrow night. Email them at eric.twarog@greenfield-ma.gov, to stop “By Right unlimited apartment expansion.”

Al Norman’s Pushback column appears in the Recorder every first and third Wednesday.